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+==============================
+RT-mutex implementation design
+==============================
+
+Copyright (c) 2006 Steven Rostedt
+
+Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
+
+
+This document tries to describe the design of the rtmutex.c implementation.
+It doesn't describe the reasons why rtmutex.c exists. For that please see
+Documentation/locking/rt-mutex.rst. Although this document does explain problems
+that happen without this code, but that is in the concept to understand
+what the code actually is doing.
+
+The goal of this document is to help others understand the priority
+inheritance (PI) algorithm that is used, as well as reasons for the
+decisions that were made to implement PI in the manner that was done.
+
+
+Unbounded Priority Inversion
+----------------------------
+
+Priority inversion is when a lower priority process executes while a higher
+priority process wants to run. This happens for several reasons, and
+most of the time it can't be helped. Anytime a high priority process wants
+to use a resource that a lower priority process has (a mutex for example),
+the high priority process must wait until the lower priority process is done
+with the resource. This is a priority inversion. What we want to prevent
+is something called unbounded priority inversion. That is when the high
+priority process is prevented from running by a lower priority process for
+an undetermined amount of time.
+
+The classic example of unbounded priority inversion is where you have three
+processes, let's call them processes A, B, and C, where A is the highest
+priority process, C is the lowest, and B is in between. A tries to grab a lock
+that C owns and must wait and lets C run to release the lock. But in the
+meantime, B executes, and since B is of a higher priority than C, it preempts C,
+but by doing so, it is in fact preempting A which is a higher priority process.
+Now there's no way of knowing how long A will be sleeping waiting for C
+to release the lock, because for all we know, B is a CPU hog and will
+never give C a chance to release the lock. This is called unbounded priority
+inversion.
+
+Here's a little ASCII art to show the problem::
+
+ grab lock L1 (owned by C)
+ |
+ A ---+
+ C preempted by B
+ |
+ C +----+
+
+ B +-------->
+ B now keeps A from running.
+
+
+Priority Inheritance (PI)
+-------------------------
+
+There are several ways to solve this issue, but other ways are out of scope
+for this document. Here we only discuss PI.
+
+PI is where a process inherits the priority of another process if the other
+process blocks on a lock owned by the current process. To make this easier
+to understand, let's use the previous example, with processes A, B, and C again.
+
+This time, when A blocks on the lock owned by C, C would inherit the priority
+of A. So now if B becomes runnable, it would not preempt C, since C now has
+the high priority of A. As soon as C releases the lock, it loses its
+inherited priority, and A then can continue with the resource that C had.
+
+Terminology
+-----------
+
+Here I explain some terminology that is used in this document to help describe
+the design that is used to implement PI.
+
+PI chain
+ - The PI chain is an ordered series of locks and processes that cause
+ processes to inherit priorities from a previous process that is
+ blocked on one of its locks. This is described in more detail
+ later in this document.
+
+mutex
+ - In this document, to differentiate from locks that implement
+ PI and spin locks that are used in the PI code, from now on
+ the PI locks will be called a mutex.
+
+lock
+ - In this document from now on, I will use the term lock when
+ referring to spin locks that are used to protect parts of the PI
+ algorithm. These locks disable preemption for UP (when
+ CONFIG_PREEMPT is enabled) and on SMP prevents multiple CPUs from
+ entering critical sections simultaneously.
+
+spin lock
+ - Same as lock above.
+
+waiter
+ - A waiter is a struct that is stored on the stack of a blocked
+ process. Since the scope of the waiter is within the code for
+ a process being blocked on the mutex, it is fine to allocate
+ the waiter on the process's stack (local variable). This
+ structure holds a pointer to the task, as well as the mutex that
+ the task is blocked on. It also has rbtree node structures to
+ place the task in the waiters rbtree of a mutex as well as the
+ pi_waiters rbtree of a mutex owner task (described below).
+
+ waiter is sometimes used in reference to the task that is waiting
+ on a mutex. This is the same as waiter->task.
+
+waiters
+ - A list of processes that are blocked on a mutex.
+
+top waiter
+ - The highest priority process waiting on a specific mutex.
+
+top pi waiter
+ - The highest priority process waiting on one of the mutexes
+ that a specific process owns.
+
+Note:
+ task and process are used interchangeably in this document, mostly to
+ differentiate between two processes that are being described together.
+
+
+PI chain
+--------
+
+The PI chain is a list of processes and mutexes that may cause priority
+inheritance to take place. Multiple chains may converge, but a chain
+would never diverge, since a process can't be blocked on more than one
+mutex at a time.
+
+Example::
+
+ Process: A, B, C, D, E
+ Mutexes: L1, L2, L3, L4
+
+ A owns: L1
+ B blocked on L1
+ B owns L2
+ C blocked on L2
+ C owns L3
+ D blocked on L3
+ D owns L4
+ E blocked on L4
+
+The chain would be::
+
+ E->L4->D->L3->C->L2->B->L1->A
+
+To show where two chains merge, we could add another process F and
+another mutex L5 where B owns L5 and F is blocked on mutex L5.
+
+The chain for F would be::
+
+ F->L5->B->L1->A
+
+Since a process may own more than one mutex, but never be blocked on more than
+one, the chains merge.
+
+Here we show both chains::
+
+ E->L4->D->L3->C->L2-+
+ |
+ +->B->L1->A
+ |
+ F->L5-+
+
+For PI to work, the processes at the right end of these chains (or we may
+also call it the Top of the chain) must be equal to or higher in priority
+than the processes to the left or below in the chain.
+
+Also since a mutex may have more than one process blocked on it, we can
+have multiple chains merge at mutexes. If we add another process G that is
+blocked on mutex L2::
+
+ G->L2->B->L1->A
+
+And once again, to show how this can grow I will show the merging chains
+again::
+
+ E->L4->D->L3->C-+
+ +->L2-+
+ | |
+ G-+ +->B->L1->A
+ |
+ F->L5-+
+
+If process G has the highest priority in the chain, then all the tasks up
+the chain (A and B in this example), must have their priorities increased
+to that of G.
+
+Mutex Waiters Tree
+------------------
+
+Every mutex keeps track of all the waiters that are blocked on itself. The
+mutex has a rbtree to store these waiters by priority. This tree is protected
+by a spin lock that is located in the struct of the mutex. This lock is called
+wait_lock.
+
+
+Task PI Tree
+------------
+
+To keep track of the PI chains, each process has its own PI rbtree. This is
+a tree of all top waiters of the mutexes that are owned by the process.
+Note that this tree only holds the top waiters and not all waiters that are
+blocked on mutexes owned by the process.
+
+The top of the task's PI tree is always the highest priority task that
+is waiting on a mutex that is owned by the task. So if the task has
+inherited a priority, it will always be the priority of the task that is
+at the top of this tree.
+
+This tree is stored in the task structure of a process as a rbtree called
+pi_waiters. It is protected by a spin lock also in the task structure,
+called pi_lock. This lock may also be taken in interrupt context, so when
+locking the pi_lock, interrupts must be disabled.
+
+
+Depth of the PI Chain
+---------------------
+
+The maximum depth of the PI chain is not dynamic, and could actually be
+defined. But is very complex to figure it out, since it depends on all
+the nesting of mutexes. Let's look at the example where we have 3 mutexes,
+L1, L2, and L3, and four separate functions func1, func2, func3 and func4.
+The following shows a locking order of L1->L2->L3, but may not actually
+be directly nested that way::
+
+ void func1(void)
+ {
+ mutex_lock(L1);
+
+ /* do anything */
+
+ mutex_unlock(L1);
+ }
+
+ void func2(void)
+ {
+ mutex_lock(L1);
+ mutex_lock(L2);
+
+ /* do something */
+
+ mutex_unlock(L2);
+ mutex_unlock(L1);
+ }
+
+ void func3(void)
+ {
+ mutex_lock(L2);
+ mutex_lock(L3);
+
+ /* do something else */
+
+ mutex_unlock(L3);
+ mutex_unlock(L2);
+ }
+
+ void func4(void)
+ {
+ mutex_lock(L3);
+
+ /* do something again */
+
+ mutex_unlock(L3);
+ }
+
+Now we add 4 processes that run each of these functions separately.
+Processes A, B, C, and D which run functions func1, func2, func3 and func4
+respectively, and such that D runs first and A last. With D being preempted
+in func4 in the "do something again" area, we have a locking that follows::
+
+ D owns L3
+ C blocked on L3
+ C owns L2
+ B blocked on L2
+ B owns L1
+ A blocked on L1
+
+ And thus we have the chain A->L1->B->L2->C->L3->D.
+
+This gives us a PI depth of 4 (four processes), but looking at any of the
+functions individually, it seems as though they only have at most a locking
+depth of two. So, although the locking depth is defined at compile time,
+it still is very difficult to find the possibilities of that depth.
+
+Now since mutexes can be defined by user-land applications, we don't want a DOS
+type of application that nests large amounts of mutexes to create a large
+PI chain, and have the code holding spin locks while looking at a large
+amount of data. So to prevent this, the implementation not only implements
+a maximum lock depth, but also only holds at most two different locks at a
+time, as it walks the PI chain. More about this below.
+
+
+Mutex owner and flags
+---------------------
+
+The mutex structure contains a pointer to the owner of the mutex. If the
+mutex is not owned, this owner is set to NULL. Since all architectures
+have the task structure on at least a two byte alignment (and if this is
+not true, the rtmutex.c code will be broken!), this allows for the least
+significant bit to be used as a flag. Bit 0 is used as the "Has Waiters"
+flag. It's set whenever there are waiters on a mutex.
+
+See Documentation/locking/rt-mutex.rst for further details.
+
+cmpxchg Tricks
+--------------
+
+Some architectures implement an atomic cmpxchg (Compare and Exchange). This
+is used (when applicable) to keep the fast path of grabbing and releasing
+mutexes short.
+
+cmpxchg is basically the following function performed atomically::
+
+ unsigned long _cmpxchg(unsigned long *A, unsigned long *B, unsigned long *C)
+ {
+ unsigned long T = *A;
+ if (*A == *B) {
+ *A = *C;
+ }
+ return T;
+ }
+ #define cmpxchg(a,b,c) _cmpxchg(&a,&b,&c)
+
+This is really nice to have, since it allows you to only update a variable
+if the variable is what you expect it to be. You know if it succeeded if
+the return value (the old value of A) is equal to B.
+
+The macro rt_mutex_cmpxchg is used to try to lock and unlock mutexes. If
+the architecture does not support CMPXCHG, then this macro is simply set
+to fail every time. But if CMPXCHG is supported, then this will
+help out extremely to keep the fast path short.
+
+The use of rt_mutex_cmpxchg with the flags in the owner field help optimize
+the system for architectures that support it. This will also be explained
+later in this document.
+
+
+Priority adjustments
+--------------------
+
+The implementation of the PI code in rtmutex.c has several places that a
+process must adjust its priority. With the help of the pi_waiters of a
+process this is rather easy to know what needs to be adjusted.
+
+The functions implementing the task adjustments are rt_mutex_adjust_prio
+and rt_mutex_setprio. rt_mutex_setprio is only used in rt_mutex_adjust_prio.
+
+rt_mutex_adjust_prio examines the priority of the task, and the highest
+priority process that is waiting any of mutexes owned by the task. Since
+the pi_waiters of a task holds an order by priority of all the top waiters
+of all the mutexes that the task owns, we simply need to compare the top
+pi waiter to its own normal/deadline priority and take the higher one.
+Then rt_mutex_setprio is called to adjust the priority of the task to the
+new priority. Note that rt_mutex_setprio is defined in kernel/sched/core.c
+to implement the actual change in priority.
+
+Note:
+ For the "prio" field in task_struct, the lower the number, the
+ higher the priority. A "prio" of 5 is of higher priority than a
+ "prio" of 10.
+
+It is interesting to note that rt_mutex_adjust_prio can either increase
+or decrease the priority of the task. In the case that a higher priority
+process has just blocked on a mutex owned by the task, rt_mutex_adjust_prio
+would increase/boost the task's priority. But if a higher priority task
+were for some reason to leave the mutex (timeout or signal), this same function
+would decrease/unboost the priority of the task. That is because the pi_waiters
+always contains the highest priority task that is waiting on a mutex owned
+by the task, so we only need to compare the priority of that top pi waiter
+to the normal priority of the given task.
+
+
+High level overview of the PI chain walk
+----------------------------------------
+
+The PI chain walk is implemented by the function rt_mutex_adjust_prio_chain.
+
+The implementation has gone through several iterations, and has ended up
+with what we believe is the best. It walks the PI chain by only grabbing
+at most two locks at a time, and is very efficient.
+
+The rt_mutex_adjust_prio_chain can be used either to boost or lower process
+priorities.
+
+rt_mutex_adjust_prio_chain is called with a task to be checked for PI
+(de)boosting (the owner of a mutex that a process is blocking on), a flag to
+check for deadlocking, the mutex that the task owns, a pointer to a waiter
+that is the process's waiter struct that is blocked on the mutex (although this
+parameter may be NULL for deboosting), a pointer to the mutex on which the task
+is blocked, and a top_task as the top waiter of the mutex.
+
+For this explanation, I will not mention deadlock detection. This explanation
+will try to stay at a high level.
+
+When this function is called, there are no locks held. That also means
+that the state of the owner and lock can change when entered into this function.
+
+Before this function is called, the task has already had rt_mutex_adjust_prio
+performed on it. This means that the task is set to the priority that it
+should be at, but the rbtree nodes of the task's waiter have not been updated
+with the new priorities, and this task may not be in the proper locations
+in the pi_waiters and waiters trees that the task is blocked on. This function
+solves all that.
+
+The main operation of this function is summarized by Thomas Gleixner in
+rtmutex.c. See the 'Chain walk basics and protection scope' comment for further
+details.
+
+Taking of a mutex (The walk through)
+------------------------------------
+
+OK, now let's take a look at the detailed walk through of what happens when
+taking a mutex.
+
+The first thing that is tried is the fast taking of the mutex. This is
+done when we have CMPXCHG enabled (otherwise the fast taking automatically
+fails). Only when the owner field of the mutex is NULL can the lock be
+taken with the CMPXCHG and nothing else needs to be done.
+
+If there is contention on the lock, we go about the slow path
+(rt_mutex_slowlock).
+
+The slow path function is where the task's waiter structure is created on
+the stack. This is because the waiter structure is only needed for the
+scope of this function. The waiter structure holds the nodes to store
+the task on the waiters tree of the mutex, and if need be, the pi_waiters
+tree of the owner.
+
+The wait_lock of the mutex is taken since the slow path of unlocking the
+mutex also takes this lock.
+
+We then call try_to_take_rt_mutex. This is where the architecture that
+does not implement CMPXCHG would always grab the lock (if there's no
+contention).
+
+try_to_take_rt_mutex is used every time the task tries to grab a mutex in the
+slow path. The first thing that is done here is an atomic setting of
+the "Has Waiters" flag of the mutex's owner field. By setting this flag
+now, the current owner of the mutex being contended for can't release the mutex
+without going into the slow unlock path, and it would then need to grab the
+wait_lock, which this code currently holds. So setting the "Has Waiters" flag
+forces the current owner to synchronize with this code.
+
+The lock is taken if the following are true:
+
+ 1) The lock has no owner
+ 2) The current task is the highest priority against all other
+ waiters of the lock
+
+If the task succeeds to acquire the lock, then the task is set as the
+owner of the lock, and if the lock still has waiters, the top_waiter
+(highest priority task waiting on the lock) is added to this task's
+pi_waiters tree.
+
+If the lock is not taken by try_to_take_rt_mutex(), then the
+task_blocks_on_rt_mutex() function is called. This will add the task to
+the lock's waiter tree and propagate the pi chain of the lock as well
+as the lock's owner's pi_waiters tree. This is described in the next
+section.
+
+Task blocks on mutex
+--------------------
+
+The accounting of a mutex and process is done with the waiter structure of
+the process. The "task" field is set to the process, and the "lock" field
+to the mutex. The rbtree node of waiter are initialized to the processes
+current priority.
+
+Since the wait_lock was taken at the entry of the slow lock, we can safely
+add the waiter to the task waiter tree. If the current process is the
+highest priority process currently waiting on this mutex, then we remove the
+previous top waiter process (if it exists) from the pi_waiters of the owner,
+and add the current process to that tree. Since the pi_waiter of the owner
+has changed, we call rt_mutex_adjust_prio on the owner to see if the owner
+should adjust its priority accordingly.
+
+If the owner is also blocked on a lock, and had its pi_waiters changed
+(or deadlock checking is on), we unlock the wait_lock of the mutex and go ahead
+and run rt_mutex_adjust_prio_chain on the owner, as described earlier.
+
+Now all locks are released, and if the current process is still blocked on a
+mutex (waiter "task" field is not NULL), then we go to sleep (call schedule).
+
+Waking up in the loop
+---------------------
+
+The task can then wake up for a couple of reasons:
+ 1) The previous lock owner released the lock, and the task now is top_waiter
+ 2) we received a signal or timeout
+
+In both cases, the task will try again to acquire the lock. If it
+does, then it will take itself off the waiters tree and set itself back
+to the TASK_RUNNING state.
+
+In first case, if the lock was acquired by another task before this task
+could get the lock, then it will go back to sleep and wait to be woken again.
+
+The second case is only applicable for tasks that are grabbing a mutex
+that can wake up before getting the lock, either due to a signal or
+a timeout (i.e. rt_mutex_timed_futex_lock()). When woken, it will try to
+take the lock again, if it succeeds, then the task will return with the
+lock held, otherwise it will return with -EINTR if the task was woken
+by a signal, or -ETIMEDOUT if it timed out.
+
+
+Unlocking the Mutex
+-------------------
+
+The unlocking of a mutex also has a fast path for those architectures with
+CMPXCHG. Since the taking of a mutex on contention always sets the
+"Has Waiters" flag of the mutex's owner, we use this to know if we need to
+take the slow path when unlocking the mutex. If the mutex doesn't have any
+waiters, the owner field of the mutex would equal the current process and
+the mutex can be unlocked by just replacing the owner field with NULL.
+
+If the owner field has the "Has Waiters" bit set (or CMPXCHG is not available),
+the slow unlock path is taken.
+
+The first thing done in the slow unlock path is to take the wait_lock of the
+mutex. This synchronizes the locking and unlocking of the mutex.
+
+A check is made to see if the mutex has waiters or not. On architectures that
+do not have CMPXCHG, this is the location that the owner of the mutex will
+determine if a waiter needs to be awoken or not. On architectures that
+do have CMPXCHG, that check is done in the fast path, but it is still needed
+in the slow path too. If a waiter of a mutex woke up because of a signal
+or timeout between the time the owner failed the fast path CMPXCHG check and
+the grabbing of the wait_lock, the mutex may not have any waiters, thus the
+owner still needs to make this check. If there are no waiters then the mutex
+owner field is set to NULL, the wait_lock is released and nothing more is
+needed.
+
+If there are waiters, then we need to wake one up.
+
+On the wake up code, the pi_lock of the current owner is taken. The top
+waiter of the lock is found and removed from the waiters tree of the mutex
+as well as the pi_waiters tree of the current owner. The "Has Waiters" bit is
+marked to prevent lower priority tasks from stealing the lock.
+
+Finally we unlock the pi_lock of the pending owner and wake it up.
+
+
+Contact
+-------
+
+For updates on this document, please email Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
+
+
+Credits
+-------
+
+Author: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
+
+Updated: Alex Shi <alex.shi@linaro.org> - 7/6/2017
+
+Original Reviewers:
+ Ingo Molnar, Thomas Gleixner, Thomas Duetsch, and
+ Randy Dunlap
+
+Update (7/6/2017) Reviewers: Steven Rostedt and Sebastian Siewior
+
+Updates
+-------
+
+This document was originally written for 2.6.17-rc3-mm1
+was updated on 4.12